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When it comes to opiates, just say NO
Gavril W. Pasternak
Department of Neurology and The Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, USA.
Address correspondence to: Gavril W. Pasternak, Department of Neurology and The Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021, USA. Phone: (646) 888-2165; E-mail: pasterng@mskcc.org.
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Published November 1, 2007 - More info
J Clin Invest. 2007;117(11):3185–3187. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI34035.
© 2007 The American Society for Clinical Investigation
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Abstract
Severe pain syndromes reduce quality of life in patients with inflammatory and neoplastic diseases, often because chronic opiate therapy results in reduced analgesic effectiveness, or tolerance, leading to escalating doses and distressing side effects. The mechanisms leading to tolerance are poorly understood. Our studies revealed that development of antinociceptive tolerance to repeated doses of morphine in mice was consistently associated with the appearance of several tyrosine-nitrated proteins in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, including the mitochondrial isoform of superoxide (O2–) dismutase, the glutamate transporter GLT-1, and the enzyme glutamine synthase. Furthermore, antinociceptive tolerance was associated with increased formation of several proinflammatory cytokines, oxidative DNA damage, and activation of the nuclear factor poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase. Inhibition of NO synthesis or removal of O2– blocked these biochemical changes and inhibited the development of tolerance, pointing to peroxynitrite (ONOO–), the product of the interaction between O2– and NO, as a signaling mediator in this setting. Indeed, coadministration of morphine with the ONOO– decomposition catalyst, Fe(III) 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(N-methylpyridinium-4-yl)porphyrin, blocked protein nitration, attenuated the observed biochemical changes, and prevented the development of tolerance in a dose-dependent manner. Collectively, these data suggest a causal role for ONOO– in pathways culminating in antinociceptive tolerance to opiates. Peroxynitrite (ONOO–) decomposition catalysts may have therapeutic potential as adjuncts to opiates in relieving suffering from chronic pain.
Authors
Carolina Muscoli, Salvatore Cuzzocrea, Michael M. Ndengele, Vincenzo Mollace, Frank Porreca, Francesca Fabrizi, Emanuela Esposito, Emanuela Masini, George M. Matuschak, Daniela Salvemini
With the recognition of the importance of pain control in recent years and its designation as the “fifth vital sign” has come a marked expansion in opiate use, including the use of high doses in patients with refractory malignant and nonmalignant pain. Since there is no ceiling effect to opioid analgesia, doses can be increased to overcome tolerance or the inherent insensitivity of some pain types to opiate analgesics. In clinical practice, doses are progressively increased until the pain is controlled, but dose escalation is often limited by side effects such as sedation, confusion, constipation, or respiratory depression. Although tolerance develops to these side effects, it may not develop as quickly or to as great an extent as it does to analgesia, leading to a narrowing of the therapeutic index. It has been suggested that preventing tolerance would enable the use of lower opiate doses and avoid or minimize these side effects.
Opioid tolerance was considered an undesired and unavoidable result of chronic dosing until recent discoveries in animal models found that tolerance could be prevented without interfering with analgesia (1, 2). However, these same observations have not yet been fully confirmed clinically. Clinical pain is difficult to study due to inherent problems in the quantification of pain and pain relief, the influence of emotional and non-nociceptive factors in its perception, and the wide range of sensitivity of individuals to pain and to opiates. Tolerance has an additional disadvantage in that it is often difficult to dissociate disease progression from tolerance when assessing the need for dose escalation. In cancer patients on stable doses of opiates for extended periods, the need to escalate the dosage is more often due to disease progression than the sudden appearance of tolerance (3–5). Much of the clinical literature on tolerance is anecdotal, and there is some controversy about its significance. Critics of tolerance point out the ability to maintain patients with malignant (3, 4) and nonmalignant (6) pain on stable doses of opioids for extended periods of time. However, maintaining patients on stable doses for prolonged periods doses not necessarily indicate the absence of tolerance. Many of these patients take opiates at doses significantly higher than those used in naive patients, implying that they are indeed tolerant. Rather, these observations imply that tolerance may not necessarily be a continually escalating process and patients may achieve a steady state, or equilibrium level, of tolerance (Figure 1).
Figure 1Hypothetical models of drug tolerance. In drug tolerance, increased amounts of drug are needed to maintain an effect. In the clinical setting, many patients with malignant pain stabilize their dose over prolonged periods of time, with the need for further increases due to the progression of their underlying disease process. Tolerance is often considered as a progressive effect, in which drug doses need to be continually escalated. However, clinical observations suggest that in many situations tolerance can achieve a steady-state in which stable doses of drug are sufficient for extended periods of time.
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NMDA receptor/NO cascade and opioid tolerance
The modulatory neurotransmitter circuits offer particularly useful pharmacological targets. The most intensively studied system is the glutamate/NMDA/NO cascade (Figure 2). The importance of NMDA receptors in tolerance was first recognized over 15 years ago (11, 12) and was followed almost immediately by the discovery of a role for NO in morphine tolerance (13, 14) (see “Selected tolerance-related actions of NO”). Since these initial observations, many laboratories have confirmed the importance of the glutamate system and NO in opioid tolerance using a vast array of NMDA antagonists and neuronal NOS (nNOS) inhibitors (15, 16). There is even a mouse strain that does not develop tolerance to morphine due to a deficit at the level of the NMDA receptor (17), illustrating the potential importance of the genetic background of patients in the clinical development of tolerance.
Figure 2Schematic of the NMDA receptor/NO cascade in opioid tolerance. Activation of the NMDA receptor by glutamate induces the activation of NO synthase, which in turn synthesizes NO. As a gas, NO cannot be stored and immediately diffuses through membranes. NO will complex with heme-containing proteins such as guanylyl cyclase, which is then activated. It will also S-nitrosylate proteins, including subunit 1 and subunit 2 of the NMDA receptor. Finally, when exposed to superoxide, which is generated by superoxide dismutase, NO is converted to peroxynitrite, which will nitrate tyrosine residues within proteins, including the glutamate transporter GLT-1 and the enzyme glutamine synthase, as shown in the report in this issue from Muscoli et al. (20). Thus all three of these putative mechanisms of NO action may be involved in the development of opioid tolerance.
Despite the extensive literature over the past 15 years documenting the importance of NO in morphine tolerance, its molecular actions remain unclear. NO is an uncharged free radical gas, making it unique in the realm of neurotransmitters (18). It can readily diffuse through membranes and therefore can chemically attack many targets. It is synthesized upon demand since it cannot be stored, and its selectivity among targets is likely due to limiting its site of action by very localized stimulation of its synthetic enzyme NOS. One of the first NO actions identified was its ability to stimulate cGMP formation by binding to the heme moiety in the enzyme guanylyl cyclase, but it also will interact with other heme-containing proteins. NO is chemically reactive and S-nitrosylates a wide range of proteins under physiological conditions, including both subunit 1 and subunit 2 of the NMDA receptor (19) (see “Selected tolerance-related actions of NO”).
In their study in the current issue of the JCI (20), Muscoli and coworkers explore another mechanism of NO action in which exposure of NO to superoxide generates peroxynitrite, which then nitrates tyrosine residues. Using a murine model of chronic morphine administration, these authors confirmed the ability of the NO synthase inhibitor l-NAME to prevent morphine-induced tolerance and then demonstrated a similar effect with the superoxide scavenger MnTBAP3–, consistent with a role for peroxynitrite in the development of morphine tolerance. Evidence for this proposed role of peroxynitrite was strengthened by their observation of the accumulation of nitrotyrosine immunoreactivity in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, a region important in opioid action. Immunoprecipitation followed by western blots revealed the presence of nitrotyrosine in mitochondrial superoxide dismutase, the glutamate transporter GLT-1, and the enzyme glutamine synthase following chronic morphine administration — proteins important in glutamate actions and in the regulation of superoxide formation. The same paradigms that blocked tolerance in vivo diminished the nitration of these proteins, as did inducing the decomposition of peroxynitrite.
These are interesting studies in that they provide a strong association between morphine tolerance and the nitration of tyrosine residues in a number of proteins associated with the glutamate/NMDA receptor/NO signaling cascade. However, establishing a causal relationship is not simple. Although blocking NO production prevents tolerance, not all NO is involved in tolerance. In fact, NO also enhances opioid analgesia (21). Neuronal NOS undergoes splicing. Although the predominant splice variant is involved in the development of morphine tolerance, a second splice variant, lacking exons 9 and 10, generates NO that has an opposite effect in vivo, facilitating analgesia, presumably through different targets (21). This may make it difficult to separate NO targets important in tolerance as opposed to those important to analgesia.
It also is important to integrate these findings with the prior observation that blockade of guanylyl cyclase also prevents morphine tolerance (22) and the demonstration that two different subunits of the NMDA receptor are endogenously S-nitrosylated in the brain (19). Any or all of these mechanisms of NO action may be important in opioid tolerance. The challenge in the future will be to establish causal relationships for these mechanisms. Muscoli and colleagues have provided strong evidence correlating the generation of nitrotyrosine proteins in morphine tolerance, and this needs to be examined further (18). The potential involvement of proinflammatory cytokines and the nuclear enzyme poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase, as suggested by these authors, seems more tenuous, but certainly deserving of additional investigation. The involvement of so many diverse components in the expression of morphine tolerance makes development of a comprehensive, integrated model difficult. However, this diversity also expands the number of potential pharmacological targets and will hopefully lead to new therapies to facilitate the use of opioids in the management of chronic pain.
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